HP Printing much too dark in Afiinity Photo

[Del H]

Hi,

When I go to print a photo on my HP Envy printer, the colours are far too dark / saturated.  If I print from the windows photo app the colours are about right.

I'm using Kodak glossy photo paper - pretty standard stuff I assume(?) - though right now I'm also trying plain paper to debug until I'm somewhere in the right ball park.

What would be the recommended printer profile for a home printer with photo or plain papers?  Lots of options but most seem to be aimed at professional printers rather than than home inkjet etc.

Probably starting the obvious but I assume the soft proof settings should match the printer settings?

 Thanks very much!

[stokerg]

On 3/16/2021 at 9:40 PM, Del H said:

I'm using Kodak glossy photo paper - pretty standard stuff I assume(?) - though right now I'm also trying plain paper to debug until I'm somewhere in the right ball park.

 

This will be a Colour Profile issue, i'm pretty sure of that.  Standard plain paper will just use the standard ICC profiles that should of been installed by your printers driver/software.  So you should have option for Glossy, Matt, Plain ect.

A good starting point, what profile is your image using? 

For some tips on using the soft proof adjustment see this tutorial. 

[Del H]

Hi, thanks for the post and the video link!

In the vid, he talks about selecting a proof profile specific to his Canon printer.  In my proof profile list, I don't seem to have anything specific to my (HP) printer - or any other printer.  The list is such as Agfa Swop, Coated FOGRAs, Euroscale, Japan coated etc - then various sRGB, Adobe RGB type stuff etc.  Nothing that would relate to a home printer(?)

Re printing - if I go into the print menu and  properties for the printer, I can select plain / glossy papers, print quality etc in there.  So, I guess it's just there where I pick paper - and where the ICC files get used?

However, as with softproofing profiles, when I go to printer profile in the print menu under colour management, there's nothing relating to a home printer. 

5 hours ago, stokerg said:

A good starting point, what profile is your image using? 

I went for agfa Swop on both proof and print with perceptual rendering, colour handling performed by app.  The soft proof seems to lighten the blacks but the printer darkens them.

[Del H]

Done lots more faffing on this.  Progress so far:

 Plugging another monitor in, I find that the colours are much more saturated than on laptop screen.  So, need to fix that. 
Also seems that the colour saturation  between printing plain paper and glossy paper don’t match that well. 
Finally, it seems that while letting the app handle printer colour handling is generally good, unless you have a really good printer that has dedicated icc files etc, it’s probably better to let the printer handle colours.  I’d be interested to hear thoughts on that?

[Mastropiero]

On 3/23/2021 at 10:16 PM, Del H said:

Hi, thanks for the post and the video link!

In the vid, he talks about selecting a proof profile specific to his Canon printer.  In my proof profile list, I don't seem to have anything specific to my (HP) printer - or any other printer.  The list is such as Agfa Swop, Coated FOGRAs, Euroscale, Japan coated etc - then various sRGB, Adobe RGB type stuff etc.  Nothing that would relate to a home printer(?)

Re printing - if I go into the print menu and  properties for the printer, I can select plain / glossy papers, print quality etc in there.  So, I guess it's just there where I pick paper - and where the ICC files get used?

However, as with softproofing profiles, when I go to printer profile in the print menu under colour management, there's nothing relating to a home printer. 

I went for agfa Swop on both proof and print with perceptual rendering, colour handling performed by app.  The soft proof seems to lighten the blacks but the printer darkens them.

I was going to post something quite similar as I have, too, started to home print, I hope you don't mind me piggybacking on your thread. I have the exact problem. When soft proofing, I honestly haven't got the foggiest what profile to choose for nothing that's listed there makes an awful lot of sense to me, much less is it related in any shape of form to neither the printer nor the paper I am using. The printer is a Canon TS8350, I know it's not a proper printer for photography but still, I'd like to squeeze out of it as good results as possible. Eventually, I settled for the Generic CMYK profile and made sure I was selecting the correct paper both on the printer and on the print dialogue. That was also approximate because, for the test prints I've done, I used paper inherited from my Dad, which is at least 10 years old. To make matters worse, they aren't even Canon.

 

The problem with the paper is sorted, I shall be receiving tomorrow a pack, but my question remains: what profile should I soft proof to? I've checked on Canon's website, there are no specific paper profiles for my printer, hence my question.

 

Thank you for your help,

Stefan

[StFoldex]

Have you chosen the correct colour space in Affinity Photo. sRGB is different form RGBf, or Adobe RGB (1998). Apple RGB, your own Monitor RGB (etc.) colour space? RGB looks by far more bright and crispy than a printer usually can print out. This is why you can adjust your monitor to the colour space of your printer and as well your photo/image/grapphic design software to the target colour space (could be printer for print out, or web, or just to be viewed on your monitor). You have to use a colour space in your software according to the final taget you create or edit your picture for.

[Del H]

Hi Stefan, no problem at all 😃

I'm currently going backwards.  As I mentioned above, I've plugged another monitor in and found it's much more saturated than my Lenovo laptop screen.  But then a tried an old laptop which roughly matches my newer one.  I've tried playing with colour management in Windows but I'm not really getting anywhere - I'm trying to match laptop to the external monitor as that seems closer to what gets printed.  So basically cal'ing one thing to another unknown - brilliant 😂  Not really having much joy.

That said, the printer is still darker than the darkest screen and soft proofing not getting me anywhere.  As you've said, I don't have anything in my options for an HP or any other printer.  Interestingly, I did a cal on my monitor which got saved as an ICC profile - that did then appear in my soft proof / print list.  Not sure where that got me though...

StFoldex:

Thanks for the comments.  I'm using a test image from Digital Dog at the moment.  As above, it comes out darker in print than either monitor.  It's colour space is Colourmatch - so I've left it as that.  I tried converting to sRGB but not a huge change.  Assigning ICC sRGB profile kind of gets it closer but not really much.  I get the gist but I'm not sure I fully understand fully what you're telling me... sorry.

[Del H]

Ok, think I’ve got to a conclusion. 
I’ve changed the saturation on laptop monitor to match iPhone and other monitor.  Seems a reasonable bet given I’m not a pro. 
 

Reading other forums in PS, it looks like the generic HP printers don’t give profiles that you can pick from - it does it all for you. I.e., let the printer handle colours.  
In PSE, if you let the printer handle colours, it sets the profile to AdobeRGB - you can’t change it.  The print is reasonably consistent with screen.

 If I let printer handle colours in AP, and set the printer profile to AdobeRGB, the print is again too saturated. 

Conclusion for me is probably just print from PSE rather than keep chewing through paper and ink trying to get a good result in AP.

Useful link re HP printers:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/color-printing-issues-hp-envy-7640/m-p/9288304